1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus for use in an electrophotographic copying machine, laser printer and the like, and more particularly to an improved device for collecting used waste toner discharged from an image forming unit in an image forming apparatus.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Heretofore, in an electrophotographic copying machine, when the toner remained on a photoconductive drum is collected as waste toner after transfer of toner image onto a sheet of copy paper, the toner in pulverulent state has generally been collected into a waste toner container.
However, the water toner collected was sometimes used again by returning it to a developing unit and caused troubles of lowering the quality of image since the waste toner includes paper dust and the like therein. Besides, the waste toner container tends to become large in size since the pulverulent toner is voluminous and inevitably invite the necessity of providing large size image forming apparatus. For toner disposal, the waste toner container need to be removed from the device and the toner drops out of the container thereby polluting the surroundings.
Various methods have, therefore, been attempted to prevent collected toner from dispersion and for miniaturization of a waste container by reducing the volume of collected toner wherein the collected toner is liquefied by heating the waste toner container with a heater mounted on a fitting section of the container and the liquefied toner is solidified. In this connection, for example, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 111173/1984 disclosed a method of liquefying the collected toner by a solvent.
In the prior art collecting method described above, however, it requires expensive cost for providing special means for miniaturizing the waste toner container and for preventing the dispersion of toner as well as a special space for installing the container. Moreover, it further requires additional work for disposing the toner since the collected waste toner has to be disposed.